fantasy

Pronouns for Dragons

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Writing fantasy is fun, and one of the main reasons is that the author decides the rules of each fantasy universe they create. I’ve seen so many amazing fantasy universes built up from scratch, each with its own unique culture, religion, and societies.

Links to original page

Links to original page

My most recent fantasy project has dragons. I know, lots of fantasy works have dragons in them.

In this world, dragons and humans live and work together in a sort of symbiotic relationship. There’s one major difference: the dragons of my world have hermaphroditic sexual organs and gender neutral identities. I was really excited to write this story, because I was going to be able to use gender neutral pronouns.

Genderqueer

Genderqueer flag

I was originally going to use they/their/them pronouns, because it was easiest, but then I got to thinking about it more in depth. In our own society, non-binary people started using they/their/them pronouns for two reasons. One, English doesn’t have an existing gender neutral pronoun. Two, they/their/them was established as a singular pronoun for someone of whom the speaker doesn’t know the gender.

This lends that pronoun some legitimacy. However, the use of this pronoun was shaped by a history of binary genders in western societies. There was no other gender identities acknowledged until recently.

So why would I use they/their/them for my gender neutral dragons? Gender neutral identities are all that dragons know and have known since the inception of their society, at least in the history of dragons in the area they currently inhabit. Of course they already have their own gender neutral pronoun.

Transgender_symbol

But of course, that means that I now have to make up a gender neutral pronoun for them to use. I’ve already asked a few people what they thought of this, and while most people agree with my reasoning about dragons having a pre-existing neutral pronoun, no one really has any ideas of what a dragon pronoun would sound like.

So, back to the drawing board with me, because now I have to go back and decide the evolution of draconic languages.

Who knew this required so much history creation?

For those of you who have been following along on the blog, yes, these are the same dragons I was talking about before. And yes, the main character is still ace/aro.

Does that make my character’s identity really complicated? Yes.

Is it unnecessarily complicated? No.

Because you see, my friends, people who have these long and seemingly complex identities actually exist in real life. I’m just framing my character in a way that reflects the reality of both our world’s and my made-up world’s intersectionality.

Readers might worry now, but I intend to show you what those identities actually mean, and the way they intersect and interact. I won’t just throw readers off the deep end and say “learn these identities, very important, if you don’t you’re a bigot! lol”

But before I do that, I guess I’m going to be writing and rewriting sections of dialogue to see how well different made up neutral pronouns work in the text.

Wish me luck!

Why Unicorns?

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Hey all!

I’m doing a couple of stops on my blog dedicated to Love Rampage, which is being released on the 28th of January.

So some of you may be wondering: Why Unicorns?

First of all: I love unicorns

Second of all: my friend Laurence also loves unicorns, and he told me to write a story about a girl who was obsessed with unicorns. I have an inkling he might have been joking, but I have been known to write on ridiculous prompts before. I’ve dedicated this story to him, mostly because it was his prompt that got me writing this.

Before you ask: no, unicorn is not some sort of euphemism for something else. I really do mean that there is an actual unicorn in this story, and when I say “rampage,” I really do mean that literally.

Unicorns are magical creatures of myth that have been depicted by humans since antiquity. Most people think of unicorns as beings of purity, uncorrupted. They are usually depicted as having an affinity for virgins. In some tales, they can purify water or heal people with their powers.

I wanted to use the symbol of the unicorn to represent the purity of Maira’s love for Carol. Her worry that Carol will not love her because she is trans is something that she must overcome. She has to learn that her love is just as valid as anyone else’s.

Her love is pure, but I am not trying to suggest that either of these girls must be a virgin because of the presence of the unicorn. People may read it that way as they want, but the idea that one should remain pure of body, or that virginity will make one pure is something that I don’t want to spread. I do not agree with virgin idealization or with slut shaming, or with shaming anybody about their level of sexual experience.

Some people might say, “But Alex, those girls are just teenagers, they shouldn’t be having sex at their age!” Too bad. Some teenagers have sex, and that is the truth.

I also think of unicorns as creatures of adventure. Unicorns are untamed magical creatures, and I like to think that they would only approach those that are pure of heart and have good intentions. Maira certainly discovers what it is like to go on an adventure with the unicorn in this story!

And for anyone who used to love The Unicorns of Balinor series, or The Last Unicorn, or even The Black Unicorn by Tanith Lee, Maira might just be a girl after your own heart.

Thank you Laurence, for this idea, and for many others before it!

This is one of the stops on my blog tour for Love Rampage, so leave a comment below and your email address for a chance to win a $10 gift certificate with Less Than Three Press!

New Release

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My most recent novella Hakusan Angel was recently released with Less Than Three Press on April 9th.

I am really excited about this book because I love writing about hardcore ladies that can handle themselves.

For those of you who haven’t heard of it already, Hakusan Angel is a story in the Mecha Anthology A Loose Screw and goes along with the theme of giant machines piloted by humans. A good example of a Mecha story is Pacific Rim. Anyway, the premise of my story is that the machines are powered by people’s energy, and people who have enough energy to power a machine are called Sources. The level of energy a person has differs, and the higher the power, the rarer they are. One of my main characters is the extremely rare Level One Source who has been hiding her powers and the other main character is a pilot.

I really liked writing this story, because my Source character Kaede and my pilot character Mariko both had distinct personalities from the start and writing them was easy. The hard part was getting them to actually work together for long periods of time without storming off. They have a very strong difference of opinion, and once I’d written that into their personalities, it was hard to get them to reconcile.

This is a f/f romance, and I know that in the book market, those don’t sell as well as m/m romances. It’s a great shame, because I love this story and think that people who love sci-fi, fantasy and mecha stories are missing out because they don’t like the pairing. This story has a lot of action scenes in it, and if I’m good at writing anything, it’s action scenes.

Anyway, that’s my love for my latest release. I have an awesome story, awesome characters, awesome cover art and an awesome publisher, so if that’s not enough for some people, there’s really not much else I can do.

I’m Alex Powell

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Hello all,

My name is Alex and I’m an author with Less Than Three Press.

So far in my writing career, I have three published works: Across Borders, Insanity Girls and Rangers over Regulus. I also have another story waiting for release that I’m very excited about.

I mainly publish sci-fi and fantasy work, however, I am quite proficient in writing many genres or cross-genres. Right now, I’m writing LGBT fiction, which is sort of a niche market. However, my goal is to help expand that market.

I hope anyone who stops by enjoys writing and reading.